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She tried to stand, but her legs were all pins and needles Arht and found the child who had thrown herself onto the floor of the nave with a ring of troubled onlookers standing carefully back while she shrieked and shrieked, nothe sanctuary of the holy church and pounded feet and hands on the floor in the throes of a furious tantruh!"

"Blessing," she said

They parted ranks to let her through Anna knelt just out of range of those flailing hands and feet

"Careful,bruise on her chin, and she was favoring one arone wild"

"Does the Brother Infirht?" Liath asked to the air at large

There were soher, that she began to think soht, souls and presences descended fro in and out of existence like a light winking on and off as a hand covers and uncovers its flame

"Lady? Liathano?" A voice swa"

Easier to be the sun, who never says, "I will not rise at ular ti to the law that set it in motion Easier to be stars, who rise and set as they are commanded, and the winds, who blow, and the mountains, who remain in the place they are set They are instruments of the power that set theered to her feet

Blessing was still sobbing, lips moist and liquid spattered down her chin "I shouldn’t have stayed with Uncle! I should have gone sooner! Then I would have gotten to him I would have saved him! I could have! I could have!"

"You irl’s side, holding a cup away and out of arm’s reach "Youa finger’s breadth from her arm

"I pray you,I iven huood or for ill, for the blessing or the curse "Princess Theophanu is to becohand It’s agreed that the princess will adopt Blessing as her heir, and that the girl will marry Conrad’s infant son, if the little lad lives"

"Beco?"

The captain eary, face shadowed, eyes dark, as he considered the girl now dropping off to sleep "I don’t knohat to think of this alliance with the Eika Yet they did have us outnue to the arhand, did hold back the killing blow There’s a party of them with us, come to escort the witch woh she’s erous to us than we are to her"

Words, like stars, swung on their course overhead and passed on into the night She knew she ought to concentrate, but it was so difficult

"What of Sanglant?" she asked "Hanna, bring me the crown" Then, after all, she remembered he was dead

"She’s all that’s left of him" Fulk’s face et, and he s she could have saved him! Poor mite"

"No, he’s not dead," she said, but when she turned around and saw hiht, she kneas "I can’t bear it," she whispered

"Nor can any of us, my lady, but we must Ai, God! We uesthouse, where a soft bed awaited her Anna knelt beside her As the girl slept, Anna undid the awful topknot and co’s black hair as well as she could She could not bear to look at the girl with her hair done up in theat the door in a low voice, arranging for food and drink, water to wash, a guard to be set over the girl Two la froirl would not wake to darkness She would be well guarded Sanglant’s guard would see to that

She heard the was to be named as heir to Theophanu She would marry the son of Conrad and Tallia, now an infant Sonant